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Message-ID: <e6663d200710240707l4d6ea4d2vf1d775cd0c23875d@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 10:07:37 -0400
From: "Matt Arnold" <matt.mattarn@gmail.com>
To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org
Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: usefulness
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Jared,

> I really liked the idea of Lojban but at my present level of
> involvement I see no point in carrying on with it if it is never going
> to be anything more than a code that an extremely low percentage of
> the Internet population uses to play mental games with one another.
> Which is, forgive me, exactly what it is at the moment.

Why forgive you? We like it that way, and we want it that way. Lojban
is a toy language. http://nemorathwald.com/node/31

I use it for the same reason that Star Trek fans use Klingon. Maybe
Lojban will change the world, and maybe it won't, but I personally
will leave that up to you; I have no interest in that.

That having been said, I would like there to be a larger number of
geeks who use Lojban as a secret code. The best hope for creating such
a community of active speakers is in the game I devised:

http://nemorathwald.com/node/43

> I feel that if key members of linguistics departments all over
> the world were shown the inherit value of Lojban than classes in it
> could commence within a year and people would begin learning and using
> this language academically.

Forgive me, but this statement is hilariously naive!

> If people were in a Lojban community where
> Lojban culture could develop and children grew up speaking Lojban (it
> would be Utopia probably) then translating things and writing things
> in Lojban would be as trivial as it was to translate thing from a
> multiplicity of languages into Modern Hebrew when the state of Israel
> was founded.

I laughed so hard at this, I nearly coughed up a lung. The creation of
Modern Hebrew was the result of thousands of years of the religious
and ethnic heritage of millions of people. And Utopia? It's never
going to happen, it's fantasy. Fantasy is fun, which is what I like
about Utopia. But taking it seriously only leads to crimes against
humanity.

> For those of you who have no academic interests but who feel as I do I
> would suggest teaching Lojban to your families or opening up a night
> course in your local area where you teach Lojban after you yourself
> have learned it to a certain degree.

I've been doing that for years. The largest local Lojban group in the
world meets in my house.

-Eppcott